Building socio-hydrological resilient cities against flash floods: Key challenges and a practical plan for arid regions

Abstract

The objective of this research is to improve the understanding and recognition of the management challenges to flash flooding hazards and the potential adaptive measures within the arid urban areas through a socio-hydrological framework. Considering the capital of Sudan, Khartoum, as an example of urban arid areas with increasing flash flood risk, the analysis was founded on expert views and opinions collected from a range of different flood management actors following the 2013 and 2014 flash flood events. The qualitative research methods included participant observation, expert interviews and focus groups. The main themes of management challenges recorded included weak institutional capacity, bad governance, limited resources, and poor urban planning. These four themes, in turn, included different types of challenges, among which lack of: civil society engagement and coordination of actors, political will, data and tools, and effective urban development strategy shared the highest number of comments from the professional actors in each theme, respectively. These findings presented a management perspective to the lessons previously established and learned from an impact assessment. Accordingly, the amalgamation of all the lessons learned from the flood research findings enabled a suitable Master Flash Flood Management Plan (MaFFMaP) to be proposed as a final product. This plan would operate within an Integrated Flash Flood Management (IFFM) framework. The facets of the MaFFMaP include steps toward improving the quantity and quality of data resources regarding this hazard, aspects for use of these new datasets within a mixed-measure (structural and non-structural) approach from the authorities, and programmes for building community and civil society capacity through improving awareness and engagement. Furthermore, it is intended that this plan would be a replicable design, which could therefore be adopted and implemented in the wider context of the urban arid regions.